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Carnoustie brown vs. desert golf course green: Which is best for the game?

What if the golf course you see out your back window looked like Carnoustie looks this week?

What if you looked out from the first tee of your home course and saw only patches of green grass on a mostly brown golf course? What if the only truly green grass on your course was the putting surface, just like we see at Carnoustie on the East Coast of Scotland this week?

A few years ago there was a lot of talk in the country and in drought-riddled Southern California in particular about how brown was the new green on golf courses. Golf courses needed to talk more about sustainability and had to stop chasing the Augusta National model of perfection that fans see once a year on television during the Masters.

But we haven’t heard a lot about brown vs. green on the golf courses in recent years. Some clubs certainly have been in favor of courses that are not as perfect and green as in the past, and some superintendents in the desert have pushed for overseeding only tees, fairways and greens on Coachella Valley courses rather than overseeding an entire course.

Grass is allowed to go brown on the perimeter of the golf course at Desert Princess Country Club in Cathedral City on Aug. 4, 2015.(Photo: Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

The problem is that many golfers hate that look. That’s especially true of golfers who come to the desert in the winter to see blue skies and green grass. It’s also true of homeowners on golf courses who want to look out their back door and see a beautiful green golf course, not something that looks closer to dead than alive.

So golfers and homeowners complained, and general managers and superintendents work for the golfers and the homeowners. Yes, many desert golf courses have cut back on overseeding, letting areas of their golf courses go dormant. And many golf courses have taken out turf to help conserve water, so there are more native desert areas for golfers to either look at or play from.

But as California swings back toward another official drought, will brown vs. green become a rallying cry for golf courses again? Is there a golf course or a superintendent in the desert willing to face the slings and arrows of complaints from players and homeowners to present a course that is much more like Carnoustie this week than Augusta National in April?

Okay, no course in the desert will ever look like Carnoustie this week. Heck, Carnoustie doesn’t really want to look like this during the week of the British Open. But weeks of no rain in the area have the course dry and brown. Scottish courses have the ability to add water to the fairways, but not the modern and high-powered irrigation systems so common in the United States.

If American golfers could get past the aesthetics, they might find brown and drier golf courses can be fun to play. Consider that 60-year-old Sandy Lyle hit a 330-yard drive on the first hole at Carnoustie on Thursday. Imagine what that could do for a golfer’s ego. And we are talking about the fairways and maybe the tees here, not the greens. Even at a dried-out Carnoustie, the greens are, well, green and running slower than the fairways on a stimpmeter.

There is certainly no reason for a course in the Coachella Valley or in California to look quite like what Carnoustie is presenting to the world this week. But as golf continues to wrestle with sustainability issues and the price and availability of water, and as drought in California continues to be a topic that focuses on golf courses, perhaps there is a middle ground to be found.

No, we don’t need a burnt-out Carnoustie. But a little more brown in the fairways, a little less green in the rough and on the tees and a little more roll in the fairways would be good for the golf course and it would be good for the golfer’s game. You wonder if that could happen in the future in the desert?

Larry Bohannan is The Desert Sun golf writer. He can be reached at (760) 778-4633 or larry.bohannan@desertsun.com. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter at @Larry_Bohannan.